S. Craig Zahler's Blog, page 2

"IT'S INSANE. I love it."
--Tim Seeley (Hack/Slash, Grayson)

"With DR. DIVINUS, Zahler arrives as a cartoonist fully formed. It's as if he's been doing this for twenty years. But it's only with this graphic novel, his first, that Zahler has turned his considerable creative talents toward comics. As a medium, comics should feel blessed."
--Benjamin Marra (Terror Assaulter, Night Business)

"S. Craig Zahler brings the same furious energy to his first graphic novel that he does to his music, movies and novels. Forbidden Surgeries of The Hideous Dr. Divinus is a deliberately paced weird horror story with punctuations of cruelty and uncomfortable hilarity." -- Josh Simmons (The Furry Trap, Black River)

"Zahler conjures the spirit of EC and weird visionary outlier comics but with way more story structure and momentum than those comics ever have. Comics is lucky to have his contribution to our medium!"
-- Dash Shaw (Bodyworld, Bottomless Belly Button)

"Zahler has produced something otherworldly ... with hints of those classic 80's underground B&W outlaw comics that we all love so much. This is something different and unexpected and I would highly recommend it!
-- Jim Mahfood, Grrl Scouts, Tank Girl, Into The Spider-Verse

Available for pre-order at:
https://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Surg...

During his 45th year of life "A singular voice in cinema," (Movies in Focus) and "One of genre's most exciting filmmakers" (Indiewire) decided to make a comic book. After the release of three startling, award-winning movies that have played around the world and been added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, S. Craig Zahler wanted to return to his first artistic passion―illustration.

Here's the setup:
Homeless people are disappearing in New Bastion, and occasionally, a dismantled corpse turns up in a dumpster. These crimes are left alone, until the day a comatose woman named Lillian Driscoll is kidnapped from the hospital. Her brothers―a grumpy detective named Leo and a slick mobster named Tommy―seek answers that lead them to darkness, arcane medicine, and pain.

Fans of Bone Tomahawk (recently named best film of the decade by Conan O'Brien) will enjoy Zahler's return to the supernatural, and the idiosyncratic, tough guy dialogue found in his crime pictures Dragged Across Concrete and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (both of which premiered at the Venice Film Festival) is also present in this starkly rendered, black-and-white graphic novel, a stylistic confluence of pre-code horror, vintage comic strip, and modern indie art styles.

"Zahler conjures the spirit of EC and weird visionary outlier comics but with way more story structure and momentum than those comics ever have. Comics is lucky to have his contribution to our medium!"
-- Dash Shaw

"Zahler has produced something otherworldly ... with hints of those classic 80's underground B&W outlaw comics that we all love so much. This is something different and unexpected and I would highly recommend it!
- Jim Mahfood (Grrl Scouts, Tank Girl, Into The Spider-Verse)

https://www.amazon.com/Forbidden-Surg...

During his 45th year of life "A singular voice in cinema," (Movies in Focus) and "One of genre's most exciting filmmakers" (Indiewire) decided to make a comic book. After the release of three startling, award-winning movies that have played around the world and been added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, S. Craig Zahler wanted to return to his first artistic passion―illustration.

With tools that he had developed as a director, screenwriter, cinematographer, novelist, and songwriter, he committed himself to writing, drawing, inking, and lettering his graphic novel debut, a full-length work of noir horror entitled, Forbidden Surgeries of the Hideous Dr. Divinus.

Here's the setup...
Homeless people are disappearing in New Bastion, and occasionally, a dismantled corpse turns up in a dumpster. These crimes are left alone, until the day a comatose woman named Lillian Driscoll is kidnapped from the hospital. Her brothers―a grumpy detective named Leo and a slick mobster named Tommy―seek answers that lead them to darkness, arcane medicine, and pain.

Fans of Bone Tomahawk (recently named best film of the decade by Conan O'Brien) will enjoy Zahler's return to the supernatural, and the idiosyncratic, tough guy dialogue found in his crime pictures Dragged Across Concrete and Brawl in Cell Block 99 (both of which premiered at the Venice Film Festival) is also present in this starkly rendered, black-and-white graphic novel, a stylistic confluence of pre-code horror, vintage comic strip, and modern indie art styles.

My new crime novel, The Slanted Gutter, is now up for pre-order in hardback, paperback, and kindle editions on Amazon, courtesy of ChiZine Publishing.
Below is a brief introduction to the piece...

Darren Tasking is a slick who lives in Great Crown, Florida and considers himself an entrepreneur. Others might refer to him as a criminal or a pimp or an extortionist or all of these things, if they knew what he was doing at night. His income is derived from a number of brothels and gambling parlors that are secreted behind iron doors in what appear to be typical apartment buildings. The police—whom he refers to as “the machos”—are oblivious of his enterprises, but he was incarcerated years ago and is uncommonly careful.

When Tasking cannot convince someone to do something he wants, he alters that person’s life—elaborately and maliciously—until that person yields to his wishes. He is oblique and autonomous, and he is successful. Daily, his plots, parlors, and prostitutes bring him closer to the large dollar amount that is his ultimate career goal.

Things start to change when he walks into the Cherry Red strip club for the first time and meets the dancer, Erin Green. . . .


https://www.amazon.com/Slanted-Gutter...

On October 23rd, 2015, the movie Bone Tomahawk was released. This western I wrote, directed, and co-composed; it features Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Richard Jenkins, and Matthew Fox.

"[A] witty fusion of western, horror and comedy that gallops to its own beat." —NY Times
"Great dialogue, strong characters, and imaginative and memorable kills." —IGN.com
"...Bone Tomahawk succeeds in demonstrating the voice of its massively talented creator." —Twitchfilm.com
"A handsome Western with horror overtones." —Hollywood Reporter
"A genre-smashing confluence of an oater and an eater, Bone Tomahawk is an absolute blast..." —birthmoviesdeath.com
"...a most violent delight" —Variety
"...Bone Tomahawk isn’t just the best horror movie of 2015, it’s the best movie..." —shocktiltyoudrop.com
"There's a humming genre intelligence at work in the grim, witty horror-western Bone Tomahawk." LA Times

At the Sitges International Film Festival the film won the critic's award for best picture, and I was given the award for best director.

More recently, Richard Jenkins was nominated for the Independent Spirit Award for best supporting actor, and I was nominated for best screenplay.

“Whether writing westerns, science fiction, or crime, Zahler always manages to bring something new to the genre…Zahler’s mean streets are bizarrely mean. But Mean Business is often mordantly funny, too—and not to be missed.”
—Booklist, starred review

"Zahler tells a gripping story."
—Kirkus Review

“Zahler evocatively illustrates a city on the verge of moral and economic collapse.”
—Associated Press

"From the cinematic first sentence of the first paragraph of the first page of this book, S. Craig Zahler serves notice that the term “mean streets” is not exclusively reserved for big cities on either coast. Mean Business on North Ganson Street offers up a ‘heartland noir’ that will appeal to readers for whom mystery novels are like crack, but it will also entertain those who usually prefer to experience their crime fiction on shows like The Killing, and The Fall, and True Detective. Read this book.”
—CriminalElement.com

“Riveting and horrifying.”
—CurledUp.com

"[A] grim, brilliantly imagined work."
--bookreporter.com

"Zahler means business all right. As funny as it is moving and as tender as it is violent, Mean Business On North Ganson Street is a superb police thriller that carries serious emotional heft."
—Allan Guthrie, Edgar-nominated author of Slammer

From the Booklist review:

"Whether writing westerns, science fiction, or crime, Zahler (Corpus Chrome, Inc., 2013) always manages to bring something new to the genre.
"Zahler’s mean streets are bizarrely mean. But Mean Business is often mordantly funny, too—and not to be missed."

From Kirkus Review:

"Zahler tells a gripping story."

"Whether writing westerns, science fiction, or crime, Zahler (Corpus Chrome, Inc., 2013) always manages to bring something new to the genre. This time it’s the most shambolically dying Rust Belt city in crime fiction. Zahler’s mean streets are bizarrely mean. But Mean Business is often mordantly funny, too—and not to be missed." Booklist, Starred Review

"Zahler means business all right. As funny as it is moving and as tender as it is violent, Mean Business On North Ganson Street is a superb police thriller that carries serious emotional heft."
—Allan Guthrie, Edgar-nominated author of Slammer


"Zahler tells a gripping story."
—Kirkus Review

Author S. Craig Zahler ... puts miles between himself and other writers with his grim tone and no-holds-barred approach to writing."
--Sean Tuohy, writersbone.com

[O]riginal, literate voices that embrace dark material are anything but common.
Enter Craig Zahler..."
--Variety

My new science fiction novel Corpus Chrome, Inc. is now widely available in paperback, hardback and kindle editions.

“CORPUS CHROME, INC describes one of the weirder post-singularity futures. The characters are very much alive. I was entertained throughout.” —Larry Niven, multiple Hugo and Nebula award winning author of the Ringworld series

“[We fell] completely under Zahler’s spell, buying into his near-future world and becoming so involved in his characters’ lives that, when the book ends, we are loath to leave these people and their world. A bravura literary performance.” —Dave Pitt, Booklist, Starred Review

“Zahler’s a fabulous story teller...”
—Kurt Russell, star of Escape from New York, Tombstone, Dark Blue, and Death Proof

Praise for Wraiths of the Broken Land from Kurt Russell, Joe R. Lansdale, Ed Lee, Jack Ketchum, and Booklist:

"Zahler's a fabulous story teller whose style catapults his reader into the turn of the century West with a ferocious sense of authenticity."
–Kurt Russell, star of Tombstone, Escape from New York, Dark Blue, and Death Proof

"It would be utterly insufficient to say that WRAITHS is the most diversified and expertly written western I’ve ever read."
–Edward Lee, author of The Bighead and Gast.

"If you’re looking for something similar to what you’ve read before, this ain’t it. If you want something comforting and predictable, this damn sure ain’t it. But if you want something with storytelling guts and a weird point of view, an unforgettable voice, then you want what I want, and that is this."
–Joe R. Lansdale, author of The Bottoms, Mucho Mojo, and Savage Season

"[C]ompulsively readable…. Fans of Zahler’s A Congregation of Jackals (2010) will be satisfied; think Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. [C]lever mayhem ... leads to a riveting climax."
–Booklist

"WRAITHS always rings true, whether it's visiting the depths of despair, the fury of violence, or the fragile ties that bind us together for good or ill. It's a Western with heart and intelligence, always vivid, with characters you will detest or care about or both, powerfully written."
–Jack Ketchum, author of Off Season and The Girl Next Door